SELECTED WRITINGS

Peter Davies on Kirsten Glass, 2007

I have always admired Kirsten Glass's ambitious decadent looking paintings. They have a gothic Weimar Republic glamour mixed with a punky day glo make up excitement. I'm impressed by the heroic scale and the painterly dexterity, the way she effortlessly manages to combine figuration and abstraction, and sometimes text. I like the wildness of how she incorporates unlikely materials and objects like sand and glitter and mannequins and dripping paint. They make me think of Robert Rauschenberg and JasperJohns. The women she portrays are incredibly sexy, in a girl who likes girls sort of way which is so appealing, and whilst the paintings have a material sensitivity and femininity, there is also a tough intelligence in their construction. They are literally dripping in references to film noir and fairy tales and magazines and music. They have a rock and roll voodoo feel that reminds me of Patti Smith and PJ Harvey and Debbie Harry, that also ties in with a contemporary art trajectory that runs from Elliott Hundley, Steven Shearer, Banks Violette, Jutta Koether, Isa Genzken to Steven Parrino.

In the newer paintings she has put panels together of different sizes like Elsworth Kelly but in contrast to his minimalism her flamboyant juxtapositions offer up a buzzing full on experience where in Kirsten's own words "editing devices and pre-posed found 'characters' are staged in a continual displacement of conclusive meaning."